June 19, 2008

The Real Excitement At BIO

Posted by Lisa Jarvis on June 19, 2008 in Where is C&EN?

Walking the convention floor this afternoon, I heard a roar rise from somewhere on the floor, seemingly from the direction of the German pavillion. The cause of the commotion? A scientific breakthrough? An exciting deal announcement? Not even close. It seems Germany had been prescient enough to have a huge plasma-screen TV at their booth, and a crowd had gathered to watch Germany play Portugal in the Euro quarter-final.

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Frameworks, Jobs, Fraud, And Stuff

Posted by Rachel Pepling on June 19, 2008 in Ripped From the Pages

In case you haven’t already flipped through this week’s issue of C&EN (or it hasn’t come in one piece yet), here are a few stories of interest:

• Chemists aren’t necessarily thinkin’ outside of the box when it comes to frameworks of compounds in the CAS registry.
• The U.S. job market isn’t looking so hot right now, but it’s looking less not-so-hot for chemists.
• What is hot? Preventing fraud in journal articles.
• Everybody’s favorite, What’s That Stuff?, returns to tackle liquid bandages.

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Highs And Lows Of BIO

Posted by Lisa Jarvis on June 19, 2008 in Where is C&EN?

When you attend a conference as big as BIO—more than 20,000 people have converged on San Diego—the chance of seeing some pretty heavy-hitting speakers is high. Unfortunately, the chance that a heavy-hitting speaker will be a speck in the distance is also high. The line for yesterday’s keynote luncheon, which featured the odd combination of J. Craig Venter (of human genome fame) and Arnold Schwarzenegger (of gubernatorial—or, depending who you ask, “I’ll be back”—fame), was already about a mile long an hour before the doors to the ballroom at the San Diego convention center were scheduled to open. I ended up in the “overflow” room, where I watched their speeches on a gigantic screen (and found myself oddly clapping along with everyone else at the end of Venter’s talk, even though he was several city blocks away). So it felt particularly special when, just a few hours later, I found myself at a media event hosted by Amgen, where I sat just 5 feet away as Elizabeth Edwards gave her perspective on innovation and the drug industry. It’s well known that Edwards is dealing with a recurrence of breast cancer, and she’s been a regular contributor to the national debate about health care.

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